This legislation [ethnic intimidation law]
does more than punish. . . . It says something
about who we are, and about the ideals to
which this state is committed.

New Jersey Governor Jim Florio, August 1990

Identity Politics

The proliferation of hate crime laws in the 1980s and 1990s should not
be attributed to insufficiently severe criminal sanctions. There is no reason to believe that prejudice-motivated offenders, particularly those who
commit violent crimes, were not or could not be punished severely
enough under generic criminal laws.

In this chapter, we argue that the passage of hate crime laws enacted
in the 1980s and 1990s is best explained by the growing influence of
identity politics. Fundamentally, the hate crime laws are symbolic statements requested by advocacy groups for material and symbolic reasons
and provided by politicians for political reasons.

The past thirty years have seen a shift from emphasis on nondiscrimination to emphasis on race and group consciousness. The very success
of the civil rights movement spawned a new "identity politics" that led
Americans to define themselves and others in terms of race, religion,
gender, and sexual-orientation.
1 According to political journalist Jim
Sleeper:

Identity politics makes race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation
into the primary lenses through which people view themselves and

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